Multi-channel Marketing

Guest Blog By David Potter, Vice President, Professional Services, Distribion, Inc. One of the basic assumptions this blog makes is that its readers are marketers who are interested in improving their multi-channel marketing results through almost any means possible. Another is that there is a place for technology in almost any distributed marketing organization – that it in any situation where there is a centralized corporate marketing department and one or more field or local marketing and sales organizations that use marketing materials created by corporate marketing to reach local prospects and customers. But is that an accurate assumption? Can Read More

In July, The Distributed Marketing Blog completed its first survey of marketing executives. We asked about their current spending priorities, spending plans for 2012, their view of how effective various marketing channels were, and how they selected different marketing communications tools. So far, we’ve published three sets of data tables that detailed some of the findings. The first looked at planned 2012 spending , the second reported on marketing spending by channel, and the third rated marketing communications channels on their effectiveness. As we have continued to analyze the results, as well as the emails and feedback we’ve gotten from the Read More

Multi-channel marketing means delivering the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, through the right communications channel. All without blowing the budget. So how do marketers rate marketing channels when it comes to effectiveness? According to 95% of the CMO’s* who responded to The Distributed Marketing Blog’s survey in July, 2011, email is somewhat or very effective. * 190 marketers with the title CMO, Vice President, Sr. Vice President, or Director of marketing answered a July 2011 survey conducted by The Distributed Marketing Blog. The chart shown here summarizes responses to the question: Please rank the marketing communications channels below Read More

According to a new survey conducted July 5-20, 2011, spending plans for 2012 are shifting towards social and mobile marketing communications channels, as marketers at large and small businesses begin the process of preparing their budgets for the coming year. Survey responses highlighted below focus on marketing objectives, spending priorities, and spending plans. The first table shows the split between large enterprises and smaller companies, but the other two tables show overall marketing budget plans across the board. Which of the following business objectives are the most important when setting your 2012 marketing budget? Which of the following marketing communications channels are Read More

According to both Forrester and Gartner, about 76% of U.S. workers have access to email on mobile devices today, and globally, it’s approximately 60% of all full-time employees. Forrester projects universal email access on mobile devices by 2014. Most marketers already know how to design good-looking, well-written HTML email messages that get results. But how do you make certain that your messages look just as good on a smart phone as they do on a laptop or desktop? The first step is to rethink your email templates with the goal of making them just as effective when the message renders on Read More

Three experts on social and digital media and compliance will present a free webinar on Thursday, July 14 that will clarify the rules for companies – and employees – in regulated industries when using online services like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others. Implementing compliant social media strategies in business can be more complex than it seems. While some regulators insist on a clear separation between personal and professional use of online services, others say that there is no difference for certain categories of employees. Some want companies to issue clear guidelines that restrict what employees can and can’t say online; while Read More

After posting a list of six common Facebook faux pas, with the information businesses need to know to avoid them, it seems only logical to post a list of tips that can help a business create fabulous Facebook pages. Create a Page People Want to Visit. What is it about your business that would make people want to come back to the page often, or create a community atmosphere? Whatever that is, make your Facebook business page reflect that — instead of just asking people to buy your products, or touting the virtues of your management team. For instance, American Read More

Most marketers understand how Facebook works very well from a personal standpoint — but some of the recent rules and changes that Facebook has made in how it treats business users make it easy to commit a Facebook faux pas. Creating a Profile Instead of a Page — People have profiles, businesses have pages. What’s the difference? That’s worth a chapter in a thick book, not a short blog post. Here are a few of the big differences. Pages can have tabs, and page owners have much more control over how their pages look, what kinds of features they can Read More

Social Media Today just published a list of the 10 Most Common Oversights in Digital Marketing. It’s an interesting list of common mistakes marketers make in social media. One of the ten (#8) jumps out at anyone who’s ever managed a multi-channel marketing campaign in a distributed marketing organization: Settling for mediocrity: In the age of superior technology and unprecedented connectivity, settling for mediocrity is a crime. What a powerful indictment of “business as usual”! Maybe it isn’t a crime, but failing to harness the right technology is certainly responsible for lost opportunities, increased costs, and slower time to market for many companies. Forrester Read More

http://flic.kr/p/86P7Yw Forty years ago, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first electronic mail message. No one remembers now what the message said, only that it was short and difficult to compose. But whatever it said, it changed the communications picture forever. When he showed his work to a colleague, he was told firmly, “Don’t go telling anyone! That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.” Tomlinson never profited from his pioneering work, but his story of the creation of email, and how he came to use the “@” symbol to direct messages between networks, is fascinating and available online here. Here are Read More